Most young Queenslanders have what is known as a “Schoolies” adventure in the weeks immediately following the completion of Year 12 at high school. This month Journey asked three young women who had very different Schoolies experiences how their Christian faith connected with that event.Jill Prideaux Jill went on the first Uniting Church Queensland Synod Fiji Schoolies trip. On the ...

Rated G No Arms, No Legs, No Worries follows motivational speaker, evangelist and self confessed ‘hug machine’ Nick Vujicic as he aims to positively empower children, young adults and parents. Nick Vujicic knows how hard growing up can be. Being born with no limbs and with no medical explanation, he has experienced extreme lows and highs in his life. This ...

The once friendly islands of Tonga have been shaken by the mass riots and destruction in Nuku’alofa last November. Contributed to by those marginalized within the community particularly deportees from the US, Australia and New Zealand, the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga has established a program to come alongside these unsettled and marginalised youth with the love of Jesus. The ...

SHERWOOD UNITING Church Minister Rev Heather Griffin has announced that her congregation is going green. “We strongly desire a green spiritual life for our church, one where caring for the environment is integral to our spirituality and an expression of our love for God and the Creation,” Ms Griffin said. “Many individuals in our church are environmentally conscious but we ...

A DECISION of the Council of Synod will see the annual Lent Appeal fundraising venture expanded to provide a range of resources including educational and community building resources for children, youth and adults. In the Uniting Church, Lent has traditionally been marked by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. While some churches still observe a rigid schedule of fasting on certain days ...

A GROUP of teenagers from the Beenleigh area launched a ground-breaking documentary about bullying in September. An initiative of the Smart Connections Program at Beenleigh Adult and Youth Service (BAYS), a Wesley Mission activity, the film Walk in My Shoes is a collaborative and multi media effort from about 25 young people who attend the Youth Space. These young people ...

OVERWHELMED BY the technology and pace of the Queensland Synod, the Youth and Sunday School Director of the United Church in Solomon Islands Caleb Saiqoro is currently in Brisbane for a month long education program. Synod Communications Unit Manager Bruce Mullan met Mr Saiqoro while visiting the Solomon Islands, saw he had a gift for understanding computer technology, and arranged ...

TWELVE-YEAR-OLD James Erickson’s cultural eyes were opened wide when a small group of young people from Sherwood Uniting Church in Brisbane spent two weeks living in North Queensland Aboriginal communities. “I learned that Aboriginal people aren’t very different from us,” he said. “While they may have some traditional music and dance they also do a lot of stuff like us.” ...

Christian groups have offered support to Patriarch Bartholomeos I, seen by many of the world’s Orthodox Christians as their spiritual leader, after he was called to testify in a Turkish court for allegedly violating an order barring him from using his traditional title of "Ecumenical Patriarch". "Please know that amid these troubles you have our firm support in the fulfilment ...

In a society bereft of community “rites of passage”, young males in particular see gaining a drivers licence and owning a motor vehicle as a mark of the transition from boyhood to manhood. Owning and driving a car is one of the clearest means of achieving power through independence from the family, and young males demonstrate substantially higher rates of ...